So I was on the Tonight Show Friday night because of a tape I sent in to be Jay’s next correspondent. My segment got big laughs and now I’m part of a competition to be a regular correspondent. But when God gives me something good, he always adds misery to it.

CLICK HERE TO SEE ME ON THE TONIGHT SHOW

The whole weekend, I was literally the only contestant on NBC’s website that you couldnt vote for. I had no ‘vote’ box below my clip.  In addition to that, it wasn’t even my name listed.  My name had been switched with this guy Brad Wollack from LA, so I had to tell people to vote for Brad Wollack.  I felt like John Travolta in Face-off.  Or John Travolta in life, pretending to be straight and all.
VOTE FOR MY CLIP SO I CAN STAY ON LENO

So I’m watching the new Demetri Martin special when suddenly my jaw drops to the ground. Not only did Demetri Martin do one of my jokes, it probably got the biggest laugh of the night. Now right off the bat I need to clarify that I’m not accusing Demetri of stealing my joke. He’s never seen me do comedy. But apparently we independently wrote the same joke. The joke is about how I went to give someone a handshake, but he went to give me the rock, so I said, “Paper beats rock.”

I wrote it as one of my first jokes back in 2002, which I have a VHS tape of at home. Here’s a clip I had on my computer of me doing it at Hilarities in Cleveland last year:

PAPER BEATS ROCK

I have a real conflict of emotions. I’m a big fan of his work, so on the one hand, it’s quite a compliment that Demetri and I think similarly enough to write the same joke. Apparently I’m on the right path if a joke I’ve done (although not quite as well) got a huge laugh/applause on Comedy Central. But by the same token, now that he’s done it on Comedy Central, I can never tell that joke again! One of my favorite jokes is ruined, because everyone would just accuse me of stealing it from Demetri Martin. Son of a B! I wrote it first. Plus, anyone who’s seen me do the joke in the past probably already thinks I stole it from him. Comics don’t take kindly to theifs. If you get a reputation as a thief, you’re probably not going to get much work in this industry. Unless your name is Dane Cook or Robin Williams.

Once again, I need to reiterate that Demetri Martin didn’t steal the joke from me (nor did I from him). I’ve actually met him a couple of times, and he was super nice. Once after he performed at the UCB’s Crash Test show, I went to a diner with him, Aziz Ansari and some other fans. At one point, I told him my brother developed a fear of flying, which was weird because my brother flew on planes his whole life. He said, “Yeah, I have the same thing with lions.”